Thermal management: liquid coolers chill out.

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Liquid cooling provides a convenient way to remove heat from electronic components, boards, and systems. Its efficiency exceeds that of moving air, and liquid-cooling equipment does not require air channels throughout an enclosure.

Some engineers may think of liquid cooling and picture leaking pipes and damaged electronics. Fortunately, liquid cooling has moved from the prove-it-to-me stage to routine use in high-end computers and military-and-aerospace equipment. So, just think of liquid cooling as a reliable and efficient way to move heat from one place to another. The removed heat can travel some distance to a radiator that dissipates the heat into outdoor air, municipal water, seawater or even another cooling system.

Liquid-cooling techniques fall into two categories; those that transfer heat to a liquid and those that use heat to vaporize a liquid. Figure 1 shows the cooling capabilities of four types of cooling. To investigate how vendors can help customers apply liquid cooling, ECN talked with people at four companies that produce liquid-cooling products.

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Cooligy

From the start, Cooligy has focused on liquid cooling and developed a closed-loop cooling system that requires no service. "Engineers can buy components and assemble a liquid-cooling system," said Fred Rebarber, director of sales and marketing at Cooligy, a division of Emerson Network Power. "But they must ensure everything works together, assure customers of long-term reliability and guarantee service-free equipment. That can be a heavy added burden." Rebarber noted Cooligy has shipped 50,000 liquid-cooling systems for use in high-end PC workstations and so far, no system has required service.

Typically, Cooligy's engineers work with a customer to model liquid cooling techniques and include them in a design from the start. …

GENEVA, April 15 -- Publication No. WO/2011/041600 was published on April 07. Title of the invention: "FABRICATION OF HIGH SURFACE AREA, HIGH ASPECT RATIO MINI-CHANNELS AND THEIR APPLICATION IN LIQUID COOLING SYSTEMS." Applicants: COOLIGY INC. (US) and CHOI, Hae-won (US). Inventors: Madhav Datta…

Semiconductor makers have been struggling to find ways to cool their increasingly powerful chips. Intel's recent cancellation of a 4-gigahertz Pentium 4 processor that might have turned PCs into toaster ovens was a sign that they may be losing the battle. Intel isn't the only one having problems.…

As processors run faster and add more functions, keeping them cool is becoming more difficult. A Stanford University spinoff has devised a solution that combines both liquid cooling and a solid state pump to move heat away from a microprocessor's hot spots. The 2-year-old company, Cooligy Inc.…

Byline: DENI CONNOR HP, Intel and a handful of start-ups are among those working feverishly to keep ever-more-powerful server processors from becoming too hot to handle. While the problem is not new, time has become of the essence in solving it, as chips just one-eighth-inch square soon will emit…

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